Resource Extraction - Fas Lebbie PHD

Literature Review

Introduction

African countries are at the base of a pyramid that supplies industrial societies’ natural resources. Presently, Africa cannot satisfy its need for sustenance because it must fulfill the new demands from the technological commerce industry of the West, which continues to impact its environment, economic development, and socio-cultural fabric. Western modernity’s ideas of progress exponentially violate Africa’s local economies and geographical and environmental boundaries.

Transition Design calls for a “fundamental change” to more sustainable futures. This research applies the lens of Transition Design towards place-based solutions for Distributed Natural Resources Systems. I hypothesize that employing theories of Transition Design will aid in disentangling the paradox between Africa’s natural wealth and its relatively limited level of local economic growth.

This literature review attempts to diagnose the current challenges inflicted upon localities from resource extraction and the materiality of these resources to fulfill local and global needs. It then connects and synthesizes the opportunity gaps for place-based natural resource empowerment and experimental post-extractivist futures.

Natural Resource Extraction

Norman Girvan maps five historical stages of extractive imperialism that have built a system of control over land in Africa and have caused a complex interplay between political and economic factors at a national and international level. Firstly, in the “ age of conquest and colonization,” expeditions discovered new lands and initially colonized them. Following this, commercial capitalism commodified the resources on the colonialized land and created slavery. This new infrastructure grew with the First Industrial Revolution” to keep up with growing demand. Next, the “Second Industrial Revolution” created “monopoly capitalism,” creating “oligopsonistic” power. Finally, Girvan names the current system as “Global Finance Capitalism,” where direct colonial administration has been replaced by “the threat of financial blockage and trade sanctions.” Under “Global Finance Capitalism,” land control is coercive and invisible. This section considers the literature surrounding the development of this modern extractivist system in further detail.

Petras, James and Veltmeyer, Henry (2014) Extractive Imperialism in the Americas: Capitalism’s New Frontier, Leidan, Netherlands: Brill, pp. 50-51.

Core and Periphery

The study of the extraction of natural resources from Africa has been led by the core and periphery model, developed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America. Emerging from the global south, it argued that economically strong nations at the core could dictate the terms of extraction with economically weak but resource-abundant nations at the periphery. Core-periphery is the base for colonialism and extractive capitalism, embedded within the Berlin Congo Conference, which “managed the ongoing process of colonization in Africa,” relegating the African natural environment to a “standing reserve”and provided for the core’s need for commodities and profit.

Transdisciplinary scholars agree that capitalism is a force that can change its shape and has done so to maintain the core-periphery structure despite the fall of formal colonization. Stephen Bunker and Paul Ciccantell observe that little has changed from an “intensification and expansion of material processes of production” through globalization. This globalization often takes the form of financial incentives given from the core to the periphery to keep them

Petras, James and Veltmeyer, Henry (2014) Extractive Imperialism in the Americas: Capitalism’s New Frontier, Leidan, Netherlands: Brill, pp. 50-51.
Ibid, pp. 52-53.
Ibid, p. 54.
Ibid, p. 56.
Ibid, p. 58.
Wallerstein, Immanuel (2004) World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, pp. 11-12.
Craven, Matthew (2015) “Between Law and History: The Berlin Congo Conference Of 1884-1885 and the Logic of Free Trade”, London Review of International Law, 3(1), pp. 32; Heidegger, Martin (1977) The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, New York: Garland Publishing, p. 23.

in expansion of material processes of production” through globalization. This globalization often takes the form of financial incentives given from the core to the periphery to keep them in extractive capitalist systems, as Ramrattan and Szenberg observe in their study of Guyanan capitalism. As capitalism has expanded, the periphery has become more disposable, and colonial mindsets have strengthened. In her book This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein establishes the current colonial mindset, arguing that it nurtures the belief that there is always somewhere else to go to and exploit once the current site of extraction has been exhausted.”

Land Relations’ Role in Extractivism

Necropolitics

Indigenous African scholars have experienced the death and destruction wrought by the neocolonial core first hand. One such scholar is the Cameroonian philosopher Joseph-Achille Mbembe who created “Necropolitics” to describe how “death worlds” have been created in wartime and extraction, with those within them becoming regarded as the “living dead.”

Mbembe applies Necropolitics to the African natural resources space by stating that war machines have developed around natural resource wealth leading to the civil wars that shook Africa in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He states, “the concentration of activities connected with the extraction of valuable resources around these enclaves has… turned these enclaves into privileged spaces of war and death.”

Sacrifice Zones

“Sacrifice Zones” is the extension of Necropolitics outside of wartime, defined as “places that, to the extractors, somehow do not count and therefore can be poisoned, drained or otherwise destroyed.” They are the places where the environmental damage caused by Western consumerism is concentrated and are often located in Africa. Many scholars have used “Sacrifice Zones”

Bunker, Stephen G. and Ciccantell, Paul S. (2005) Globalization and the Race for Resources, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, p. 6.
Ramrattan, Lall and Szenberg, Michael (2010) “Colonial Dependency, Core-Periphery, and Capitalism: A Case Study of the Guyana Economy”, The Journal of Developing Areas, 44(1), p. 51.
Klein, Naomi (2014) This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 169.
Mbembe, Achile (2003) “Necropolitics”, Public Culture, 15(1). pp. 39-40
Ibid, p. 33.

to define specific localities and frame the suffering and activism of those within them. Lerner and Brown have unearthed the disproportionate impact of toxic waste on certain localities in the US, and Katia Valenzuela-Fuentes has investigated patterns of environmental activism within Chile’s “Sacrifice Zones.” My indigenous Kono District, Sierra Leone, has also become a sacrifice zone, with violence deployed against the Kono people to maintain the diamond trade. This had been observed by Prince T. Mabey, describing the two people were “shot dead by police in violent clashes over land at a mine in Kono with locals from surrounding villages.”

However, Rob Nixon’s intervention has been most significant, further populating the “Sacrifice Zones” space by creating the concept of “slow violence.” He describes neo-colonial violence in “Sacrifice Zones” as “a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space.” The core has the privilege to ignore this violence that it generates and does so for the moral defense of consumerism. This violence is widespread across the global south, with indigenous people becoming victims. Morgensen recognizes the intentionality of this position when he states, “many of the extraction zones that we see today are placed near indigenous communities.”

Ecological Destruction

As described by Downey, Bonds, and Clark in “Natural Resource Extraction, Armed Violence, and Environment Degradation,” Unequal Exchange Theory argues that “because of their position in the world system hierarchy, core nations are able to take advantage” of the peripheries labor and natural resources while “exporting many environmentally degrading activities to the periphery.” This explains the rise of ecological damage connected to neocolonial extraction, “Sacrifice Zones,” and Necropolitics, with the exact disconnected mechanism propagating

Lerner, Steve and Brown, Phil (2010) Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.; Valenzuela-Fuentes.
Mabey, Prince T. et al (2020) “Environmental impacts: Local perspectives of selected mining edge communities in Sierra Leone”, Sustainability (Switzerland), 12(14), p. 8.
Nixon, Rob (2011) Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, p. 2.
Morgensen, Scott (2011) Spaces between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization (First Peoples: New Directions Indigenous), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. p. 16.
Downey, Liam et al (2010), “Natural Resource Extraction, Armed Violence, and Environment Degradation”, Organ Environ, 23(4), p. 417.

environmental destruction alongside human destruction. Downey, Bonds, and Clark’s work on “war machines” activity within ecologies have developed this space. They have shown that the literal mechanism of extraction is not the only node for environmental damage within “Sacrifice Zones.” To take Downey, Bonds, and Clark’s “Natural Resource Extraction, Armed Violence, and Environmental Degradation” as an example, Mbembe’s “war machines” create further environmental havoc before resources are extracted. The primary mechanism that causes “war machines” to cause ecological collapse is the violence used in the process of switching land use for extraction. To open a mine in Africa, scores of individuals living through ecoliterate means like small farming are forced from their land. Downey, Bonds, and Clark refer to the example of Rio Tinto’s Murowa diamond mine in Zimbabwe, which led to the forceful relocation of 1,000 indigenous people.

The Materiality of Natural Resources

Once resources have been extracted, they must be manufactured into finished products. Kate Crawford’s “Anatomy of AI” establishes the periodic table to a digital map, describing the multiple processes of extraction, transportation, assembling, consumption, and abandoning that detail the creation and usage of technological products. This section examines the processes whereby extracted resources are refined for everyday consumer products and how they are retired when they become obsolete.

Technological Commerce

The “Golden Spike” was the name Forbes journalist John Steel gave to the internet when it became a “superhighway” of information. Investors flocked to the latest innovations in the technology and data sectors, with punters predicting a crash to come following this substantial boom in consumer technology. However, the collapse never came with consumer technological goods forming most of our material culture in the global north.

Downey, Liam et al, pp. 417-445.
Downey, Bonds, and Clark, p. 435.
Crawford, Kate (2019) “Anatomy of an AI System”, Virtual Creativity, 9(1), p.
117. Chong, P. Peter and DeVris, Peter (2005) “The Information Superhighway: The Golden Spike of the 21st Century”, International Journal of Innovation and Learning, 2(3), p. 224.

Consumerism

Scholars agree that the final years of the 1980s saw the coming of consumerism, a force that altered our usage and consumption of products. As the Eastern Bloc fell, the consumerism created in the US and dispersed within its sphere of influence was able to gain a global reception. Peter Sterns describes the “embourgeoisement” of the global working class because of their newfound commitment to this consumerism.

Kate Crawford develops this sense of consumerist culture into the personal technology space when she begins her “Anatomy of an AI System” webpage with a narrative of how devices like Amazon Echo have brought technology into all aspects of our lives, removing our need to interact with anything physically. Doing something with the ‘touch of a button was once the metric of ease, but we can now control everything in our homes with mere voice.

Supply Chain & Consumerism

In “Anatomy of AI”, Kate Crawford outlines the exact consequences of our technological consumerism: “each small moment of convenience – be it answering a question, turning on a light, or playing a song – requires a vast planetary network, fueled by the extraction of non-renewable materials, labor, and data.” shows how the profit motive is still the primary motivation for technology companies by analyzing their unsustainable and untraceable supply chains. She describes the fractal systems of multiple layers of contractors and subcontractors that technology companies use, making establishing the origins of natural resources impossible.

Martin, Ann Smart (1993) “Makers, Buyers, and Users: Consumerism as a Material Culture Framework” Winterthur Portfolio. p. 141.
Sterns, Peter (2006) Consumerism in World History: The Global Transformation of Desire, New York: Routledge, p. 140.
Crawford, Kate (2018) “Anatomy of an AI System: The Amazon Echo as an anatomical map of human labor, data and planetary resources”, Anatomy of AI, last seen 12/01/2021, p.1.
Crawford (2018) p. 2.

Phillips has promised to work to make its supply chain “conflict-free” but will struggle to reconcile their “tens of thousands of different suppliers, each of which provides different components for their manufacturing process.”

Scholars have long argued that business must redefine its understanding of value, to prioritize ecological sustainability and the welfare of people. Businesses must create supply chains for purposes other than just remaining competitive, and they must consider “sustainable value” as a confluence of “environmental value,” “social value,” and “economic value.” A proper understanding of the ethical implications of resource extraction requires an even more thorough investigation on supply chains of technology firms to be redesigned according to sustainability and the wellbeing of localities. As Suzanne Kite has it in “How to build anything ethically?, “’AI cannot be made ethically until its physical components are made ethically.” This idea strikes right at the heart of the technological commerce industry, whose architectural parts depend on earth’s resources.

Throwaway Consumerism

The consumption required to sustain our thirst for technological products has only been furthered by their throwaway nature, whereby we dispose of last year’s device to replace it with the latest model. Transition designer Jonathan Chapman has observed this trend and fought back against the morality that has allowed us for mass-retirement of functional devices. In an op-ed published in The Guardian, Chapman questions, “by what perverse alchemy do our newest, coolest things so rapidly turn into meaningless junk?” Chapman rightly draws our attention to how a loss of respect for the materiality of our possessions has caused a weakening of artifacts in our material culture, with each device becoming irrelevant in our imaginations as quickly as they come into them.

Ibid, p.11.
Comin, Lidiane Cássia et al (2020) “Sustainable business models: a literature review”, Benchmarking, Emerald Group Holdings Ltd., 27(7), p. 2029.
Kite, Suzanne (2020) “How to Build Anything” in Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence, Honolulu, p. 76.
Chapman, Jonathan (2021) “Today it’s cool, tomorrow it’s junk. We have to act against our throwaway culture”, The Guardian, last seen 12/01//2021, .

Planned Obsolescence

The concept “planned obsolescence” was created in 1986 by Jeremy Bulow. He defined it as “the production of goods with uneconomically short useful lives so that customers will have to make repeat purchases.”

This imagined economic concept has come to reality, with Daniel Keeble describing a “culture of planned obsolescence in technology companies.” He attributes much of this culture to the rise of Apple and their development of iPhones with irreplaceable batteries. With a lifespan of just 300-500 charges, the user expects to replace their device when the battery soon begins to fail.

Retirement

It is not just the extraction of natural resources used in technological products whose damage is hidden by complex supply chains, but also the retirement and disposal of these products that damage ecosystems and harm people’s welfare in localities. Once resources are extracted from Africa, they are exported to be converted into finished products in the West. At the end of their initial lives, they are resold to be refurbished, usually back to their origin in the global south. This has been the case since the consumer electronics boom when 700,000 phones resold in the USA returned to the global south. Thus, the cycle is complete, with the raw materials exiting Africa and being sold back to it in the form of finished products at the end of their life cycles.

Bulow, Jeremy (1986) “An Economic Theory of Planned Obsolescence”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 101(4), p. 729.
Keeble, Dan (2013) The Culture of Planned Obsolescence in Technology Companies, Oulu University of Applied Sciences.
Ibid, pp. 30-31.
Most, Eric (2003) Calling All Cell Phones: Collection, Reuse, and Recycling Programs in the US, New York: INFORM Inc, p. 11.

The impact of re-importing obsolete technological devices is rarely understood, and in 2013 representatives from the Ghanaian government conducted a study into the health and ecological implications of recycling operations in the nation. Akormedi, Asampong, and Fobil found that workers at Ghanaian e-waste dumps were “exposed to frequent burns, cuts, and inhalation of highly contaminated fumes.” Once processed, many natural resources found in the recycled devices were discarded. They then flowed back into water systems, causing pollution once more.

Place-Based Resource Empowerment

There is a stunning disparity between Africa’s natural resource wealth and the poor welfare of its local communities. The unequal exchange caused Africa to be gutted of its natural resources without receiving fair economic compensation is visible across the entire continent. For example, Niger exports 3000 tonnes of uranium to France to power much of the French infrastructure, but 70% of Niger’s population is without electricity.

Erik Reinert created “welfare colonialism” when discussing the “compensation” the global north provides nations it extracts from in the form of aid. They argue that aid may have started “as a mechanism to provide help to develop new nations,” but keep African leaders operating within the bondage of aid at the detriment of people and ecosystems existing under them.

Fractal Ontological Approaches

Having established the current problem with place-based resource empowerment in Africa, this section will examine the opportunities for fractal ontological approaches. Scholars of fractal ontology understand the world to be built from systems where “interconnectedness” is viewable as “the repetition of a naturally occurring complex pattern. Therefore, if let be, human systems will develop into complex and successful webs with people in localities able to leverage their “selfhood” to self-actualize their versions of success.

Akormedi, Matthew et al (2013) “Working Conditions and Environmental Exposures among Electronic Waste Workers in Ghana”, International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health p. 1.
Grégoire, Emmanuel (2011) “Niger: A State Rich in Uranium”, Hérodote, 142(3), p. 221; Bhandari, Ramchandra et al (2021) “Sustainability Assessment of Electricity Generation in Niger Using a Weighted Multi-Criteria Decision Approach”, Sustainability, 385(13) p. 3
Reinert, Erik S. (2006) “Development and Social Goals: Balancing Aid and Development to Prevent ‘Welfare Colonialism’” Working Papers in Technology Governance and Economic Dynamics, 3. p. 1.
Alemazung, Joy Asongazoh (2010) Post-Colonial Colonialism: An Analysis of International Factors and Actors Marring African Socio-Economic and Political Development, The Journal of Pan African Studies, 3(10), pp. 62-72. pp. 62, 71.

Indigenous Sovereignty

Fractal ontologies can provide place-based approaches to natural resources, and the following section applies them to indigenous sovereignty, whereby local communities can become liberated from global capitalist systems. “Indigenous sovereignty,” emerged from the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples after a “renaissance” of indigeneity occurring since the 1970s. It formalized indigenous self-government and determination ideas, allowing them to create their “inner worlds.”

Indigenous sovereignty breaks away from Western hegemony because it reframes indigenous people from unconsenting “minorities” within the global capitalist and extractivist system to communities with “state-building capacity and sovereign dignity.” In the next section, we will explore the threads of land stewardship, in situ utilization, and localized specificity within the lens of indigenous sovereignty.

Land Stewardship

Scholars have used land stewardship as an alternative to land ownership. Stewardship is the responsible controlling of land by inhabitants who may become empowered by it without damaging the local ecology.

Bourget, Chelsea (2020) LIVING TREES AND NETWORKS: AN EXPLORATION OF FRACTAL ONTOLOGY AND DIGITAL ARCHIVING OF INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE, University of Guelph. p. ii.
Jaques, William S. (2013) Fractal Ontology and Anarchic Selfhood: Multiplicitious Becomings, McMaster University. p. 6.
Wiessner, Siegfried (2008) “Indigenous Sovereignty: A Reassessment in Light of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, 41. p. 1141.
Short, Damien (2006) “Review: Indigenous Sovereignty and the Democratic Project: Stephen Curry”, Contemporary Political Theory, 5, p. 108.

The South African Journal of Science has published insightful articles detailing land stewardship in South Africa, finding it to be a “balancing act between stewards’ use of natural resources… and their responsibility to protect and manage the wider ecosystem.” The South African team has found that successfully negotiating this balance helped achieve sustainability goals without being detrimental to the welfare of local people.

Stewardship is built off of the concept of “receiving,” not “taking” from the land, whereby those using land for its natural resources exist in a reciprocal relationship with it. It is an extension of Armin Falk and Urs Fischbacher’s “theory of reciprocity,” arguing that “bilateral interactions” are more productive than “competitive markets.” They advocate for the equal benefit of both parties in a relationship without being forced into it.

Kite also discusses this reciprocity at great length through her observations of Lakota land stewardship: “the Lakota viewpoint is that we always look seven generations ahead.” This is a vital concept for land stewardship, as it reminds us that land is not ours to own; we look after it for the next generation.

In Situ Utilization

Land stewardship also allows people in localities to leverage land for their sustenance. In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) was created by NASA in 2016 to solve logistical problems with their Mars program. It speculated how astronauts could survive on other planets by suggesting that research is conducted into surviving from the resources already at the landing site.

Cockburn, Jessica et al (2019) “The meaning and practice of stewardship in South Africa”, South African Journal of Science, 115(5-6).; Barendse, Jaco (2016) “A broader view of stewardship to achieve conservation and sustainability goals in South Africa”, South African Journal of Science, 112(5-6).
Falk, Armin and Fischenbacher, Urs (2006) “A Theory of Reciprocity”, Games and Economic Behavior, 54, pp. 293-315. p. 1.
Kite, p. 79.

This theory offers a path to indigenous sovereignty because it can liberate communities from relying on Western aid by reducing the burden of imports from outside of their community. Many scholars have investigated current efforts in Africa to produce necessities that they currently have to import. These include electrical energy in Declan Murray’s study of Kenya’s off-grid solar market and upcycling in Daniel Karin Rosner and others’ work on DIY practices in Uganda.

The debt crisis of the 20th Century, which Coulibaly argues was partially reconciled by the Multilateral Debt Relieve Initiative in the 1990s, has returned binding Africa to American and Chinese imperialism. As of 2017, Sub-Saharan African nations had a median debt ratio of 53% of GDP. John Loxley has observed this debt is “totally unmanageable” and has led to “recurring economic crises, which Africa can only escape through more foreign aid and borrowing.” The potentiality of success of in situ utilization could go further than self-sustenance by creating a surplus for the paying of these debts, liberating the continent from imperialism

Localized Specificity

Scholars have used localized specificity to define how designs and their usage must follow the context of the locality for which they are created. Terry Irwin’s definition of transition design shows the extent to which transition designers must consider it in all their work. She states Transition Design “looks for emergent possibilities within the problem context” rather than “imposing preplanned and resolved solutions.” Likewise, communities can utilize localized specificity to make their own decisions on which resources can be utilized.

Linne, Diane l. et al (2017) “Overview of NASA Technology Development for In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU)”, 68th International Astronautical Congress, p. 1.
Rosner, Daniella Karin et al (2013), “Reclaiming Repair: Maintenance and Mending as Methods for Design”, Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems.; Murray, Declan (2018) Fixing development Breakdown, repair and disposal in Kenya’s off-grid solar market, University of Edinburgh.
Coulibaly, Brahima S. et al (2019) “Is sub-Saharan Africa facing another systemic sovereign debt crisis?”, African Growth Initiative, pp. 1-2.
Loxley, John (2003) “Imperialism & Economic Reform in Africa: What’s New About the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD)?”, Review of African Political Economy, 95, p. 119.

An essential aspect of localized specificity is the constituted appropriation of technology in Africa. Horst, Miller, and Toluwagu have researched how mobile phones are appropriated differently within specific contexts in Africa. With technology accessible to most Africans, appropriating it to their localized specificity separates them from the evaporation of place-based cultures.

Connecting the Local to the Global

Disentangling the paradox on an international level is a separate process from disentangling the paradox on a local level, and doing so can provide indigenous people with Universal Needs that they cannot achieve within their locality. Manfred Max-Neef’s Universal Needs motivated all people, and they provided for these needs in ways specific to their context. They are subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, idleness, creation, identity, and freedom. Just one of Max-Neef’s universal needs is tangibly necessary for survival and can be provided by indigenous sovereignty: subsistence.

In his article “Cosmopolitan Localism: The Planetary Networking of Everyday Life in Place,” Gideon Kossoff argues that the other nine universal needs require global connectedness to achieve in contemporary times, and the following section will propose the theories of Cosmopolitan Localism as a node to be leveraged to connect indigenous people to the global.

Cosmopolitan Localism Towards Distributed Natural Resource Systems

Irwin, Terry (2015) “Transition design: A proposal for a new area of design practice, study, and research”, Design and Culture, 7(2), p. 237.
Toluwalogu, p. 138; Horst, Heather and Miller, Daniel (2005) “From Kinship to Link-up: Cell Phones and Social Networking in Jamaica.”, Current Anthropology, 46(5), pp. 755-778.
Max-Neef, Manfred (1991) Human Scale Development: Conception, Application and Further Reflections, Apex Press, 1. p. 27.

Gideon Kossoff defines Cosmopolitan Localism as “the theory and practice of inter-regional and planet-wide networking between place-based communities who share knowledge, technology, and resources.” These place-based communities are self-organized but are “nested in more extensive and looser global networks.”

Coined by Wolfgang Sachs, Cosmopolitan Localism combines Kantian cosmopolitanism with organist and anarchist thinking. This sub-section traces the lineage of Cosmopolitan Localism and draws attention to contemporary literature and emergent threads within it.

Origin and Evolution of Cosmopolitan Localism

Cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism was created by enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant on considering encounters between cultures. He observed a transnational world where “a violation of laws in one part of the world is felt everywhere.” He imagined a world where this “universal community” would live under a single “cosmopolitan law.”

Radical Holists

Kantian cosmopolitanism later came into conflict with the radical holists. They emerged from the classical anarchist tradition of Bakunin, Proudhon, and Kropotkin, preferring “self-organization” over a technocratic global overseer. From this tradition developed the organists who applied anarchist self-organization to modern society. They believed that globalization had “hollowed out” and “atomized” society, proposing that a more “organistic” society was the path to “ecotopia.”

Kossoff, Gideon (2019) “Cosmopolitan Localism: The Planetary Networking of Everyday Life in Place”, Centro de Estudios en Diseño y Comunicación, p. 52.
Ibid, p. 58.
Nussbaum, Martha C. (1997) “Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism”, The Journal of Political Philosophy, 5(1), pp. 1-25. p. 1.
Fuchs, Christian (2002) “Concepts of Social Self-Organisation” RESEARCH PAPER INTAS PROJECT “HUMAN STRATEGIES IN COMPLEXITY, 4. p. 22.
Buber, Martin PATHS IN UTOPIA. p. 17, Bookchin, Murray TOWARD AN ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY. p. 81.

Sachs concluded the synthesizing of the seemingly contradictory ideas of Kant and the radical holists by creating Cosmopolitan Localism. He challenged the Kantian globalism that had provoked “cultural evaporation,” arguing for a global “mutual collective” to, most notably, deal with environmental issues.

Evolutionary Discourses for Cosmopolitan Localism

Ecological sociologist Gideon Kossoff has used Cosmopolitan Localism as an expansion on Max-Neef’s ten universal needs for contemporary times, recognizing that consumption alone “ignores non-material and intangible needs that are essential for high-quality lifestyles.” In our interconnected world, universal needs such as “creation,” “identity,” and “understanding” cannot be fulfilled without connecting to other communities through mutualistic relationships.

Scholars of Cosmopolitan Localism have explored the mechanisms that could allow mutualist systems to function in this way. In this space, Manzini created the “Small, Local, Open, Connected” (SLOC) framework, proposing that designs for cosmopolitan localism should work on an individual scale while fulfilling the needs of the wider local community and ecology. Furthermore, they should be “Open” to appropriation for a specific community’s needs and facilitate connections with the broader world.

Kossoff has been more specific, creating “synergistic satisfiers,” referring to projects, activities, and products that simultaneously fulfill multiple needs . Kossoff proposes these be exported to other communities where they are successful as a form of connection and for other communities to appropriate them for their unique context.

Sachs, Wolfgang (2009) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London: Bloomsbury Academic & Professional. xvii.
Kossoff, p. 59.
Manzini, Ezio “Resilient Systems and Cosmopolitan Localism – The Merging Scenario of the Small, Local, Open and Connected Space” in Economy of Sufficency: Essays on Wealth in Diversity, Enjoyable Limits and Creating Commons, ed. By Uwe Schneidewind et al, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, pp. 70-81, p. 162.
Kossoff, p. 59.

Some scholars have approached Cosmopolitan Localism from its roots, rather than developing supplementary ideas. Although Cosmopolitan Localist systems would not have “a single leader, scholars have criticized the Kantian root of Cosmopolitan Localism that displays imperialistic structures. Mignolo leads the charge, sustained by scholars such as Gerard Delanty, to develop cosmopolitanism “not through a global democracy, but through considering the implications of encounters between people.”

Mignolo is concerned that Eurocentrism has become so entrenched in political epistemologies worldwide that communities in the global south will struggle to shift the influence of European hegemony. He questions how communities can self-actualize their needs when they have become so reliant on European ideas. He questions the capability for the oppressed to become independent through a model that the oppressor has created.

Emergent Threads Towards Cosmopolitan Localism

This section will explore questions like what counts as design? What counts as entrepreneurship and innovation across a dynamic “VUCA” Africa through the lens of Cosmopolitan Localism. VUCA refers to “Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity” and describes the multilayered complexity of the contemporary world.

Nested Entrepreneurship

Africa’s young population has an entrepreneurial spirit through a need to be creative to survive high rates of unemployment and systemic failures. Acs and Adusei have noted the role of entrepreneurship to “impact on job creation and poverty alleviation” by propelling Africa to be a global hub of innovation.

Mignolo, Walter (2011) The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options, Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press. p. 23.
Delanty, Gerald (2009) The Cosmopolitan Imagination: The Renewal of Critical Social Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 59.
Mignolo, p. 23.
Mack, Oliver et al (2016) Managing in a VUCA World, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, p. v.

Exploring the cultural characteristics of African entrepreneurs will develop my understanding of the relationality between culture and entrepreneurship, helping me answer the broader question, what is entrepreneurship through the lens of transition design?

This “Cultural Entrepreneurship” can be enacted through the creation of small and meaningful enterprises embedded in the fabric of the “place” and is a theory that delivers sustainability-driven mutualism between social actors that self-actualize in line with Max-Neef’s argument that systems must “represent the needs and interests of heterogeneous people.” “Cultural Entrepreneurship” solutions will generate benefits in balance with the environment and the economy.

Within the framework of place-based entrepreneurship, “Cultural Entrepreneurship” will propose the establishment of nested and self-organizing webs of entrepreneurial endeavors, based on Folke Gunther and Carl Folke’s conceptualization of living systems. These would have great utility in applying examples of Kossoff’s “synergistic satisfiers” to more contexts and could be deployed through action-based research. Establishing models for “Cultural Entrepreneurship” networks will guide my future research.

Indigenous African Scholarship

The need for African scholarship to influence the new theories of Cosmopolitan Localism as it relates to Africa becomes crucial to mitigate the Kantian influence on Cosmopolitan Localism that Mignolo raised. Doing so will be challenging because much African scholarship and many

Dana, Leo-Paul (2018) “Introduction to African Entrepreneurship”, in African Entrepreneurship: Challenges and Opportunities for Doing Business, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 2.
Max-Neef, Manfred (2006) Real Life Economic, Oxford: Taylor & Francis, p. 198.
Gunther, Folke and Folke, Carl ( ) “Characteristics of Nested Living Systems”, Journal of Biological Systems, 1(3), p. 257.
Kossoff, p. 59.

artifacts of the past have been lost. Furthermore, Africa is not a singularity but a pluralistic continent with tribal diversity and the “highest levels of human genetic diversity in the world.” It is necessary to avoid assuming that an indigenous scholar’s work is relevant for Africa. However, Pan African scholars such as Pixley Seme’s work on the in situ regeneration of Africa and Dani W. Nabudere’s work on the African renaissance and challenge to globalization can guide our path towards Cosmopolitan Localist systems that can empower African communities. Furthermore, following the examples of Kumba Femusu Solleh’s investigation of the ancient Damby Tradition in Kono and Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart depicting pre-colonial life in Nigeria can help search for an African past.

Ecocentric and Anthropocentric Cosmopolitan Localism

The modern human world is cohabitation with 8.7 million different species, all of which are important non-human actors in our ecosystems. A Cosmopolitan Localist world for Africa must be Ecocentric and Anthropocentric to consider the needs and positionality of these non-human actors within fragile systems. This is a substantial and thus far untouched research area.

Geo-Futurism: Experimenting with Speculative Post Extractivism

This final section investigates post-extractivism of non-renewable resources and positions Geo-Futurism as an alternative transition pathway. It begins with the literature of post-extractivism and then observes three key threads for Geo-Futurism: land, environment, and the people.

Post Extractivism of Non-Renewable Resources

Reed, Floyd and Tishkoff, Sarah A (2006) “African human diversity, origins and migrations”, Current Opinion in Genetics and Development, 16, p. 597.
Seme, Pixley, (1906), “The Regeneration of Africa”, Journal of the Royal African Society, pp. 1-7.; Nabudere, Dani W (2001) “The African Renaissance in the Age of Globalization”, African Journal of Political Science, 6(2), pp. 11-28.
Solleh, Kumba Femusu (2011), The Damby Tradition of the Kono People of Sierra Leone West Africa, AuthorHouse.; Achebe, Chinua (1958) Things Fall Apart, London: William Heinemann Ltd.
Strain, Daniel (2011) “8.7 Million: A New Estimate for All the Complex Species on Earth”, Science, 333, p. 1083.

Post-extractivism was created in 2013 by Eduardo Gudynas. Scholars who advance his conceptualization take extractivism as the main force to challenge when creating “alternatives to development” They have identified the fallacy of “growth-oriented extractivism” as “based on a model that is highly destructive of ecosystems and communities.” Some extraction may occur from renewable resources, as with time, these regenerate. However, all extraction of non-renewable resources causes ecological destruction.

Degrowth economies offer a transition towards post-extractivism. Degrowth scholars such as Serge LaTouche and Giorgos Kallis believe that the most consumptive and “developed” economies must go through a period of “economic contradiction or downscaling” to bring their consumption in line with the rest of the world. Degrowth continues after the initial period of economic contradiction, with Serge LaTouche’s “a-growthism” referring to the permanent planned absence of growth within an economy.

Geo-Futurism

The current extractivist system reduces “life into objects for the use of others.” It leverages “non-reciprocal dominance-based relationship on the earth” to take from the earth without care for preserving it. The sizable monetary profits obtained by Western capitalists from this extraction come at a sizable cost to the natural capital of the place that the resources are extracted from, destroying indigenous life support systems.

Gudynas, E, (2011), “Transitions to post-extractivism: directions, options, areas of action”, Beyond Development: Alternative Visions from Latin America, Permanent Working Group on Latin America, pp. 165-188. p.198.
Escobar, Arturo (2015) “Degrowth, postdevelopment, and transitions: a preliminary conversation”, Sustainability Science, 10(3), p p. 456
LaTouch, Serge (2004) “Why Less Should be so much more: Degrowth Economics”, Le Monde Diplomatique, pp. 1-5. p. 1; Kallis, Giorgios (2011) “In Defence of Degrowth”, Ecological Economics, 70, 873-880.
LaTouche, p. 1.
Klein, p. 169.

Within the framework of post-extractivism of non-renewable resources, Geo-Futurism proposes the polar opposite of this non-reciprocal relationship with nature and indigenous people. It is a speculative theory that balances culture, place, environment, and people. Below, I explore the aspects of land, environment, and people through the lens of Geo-futurism.

Land

In This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein ties extractivism specifically to ownership structures, believing that taking from the land is “the opposite of stewardship.” Instead of this land commodification that has allowed resources to be extracted from indigenous people’s land on an industrial scale, Klein suggests that people become stewards of it as their ancestors were.

Land restoration and reclamation practice could become a key node towards a post- extractivist world. Restoration of land is the “process of recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged or destroyed, returning it to its original state.” Reclamation is a more pragmatic alternative to restoration where mining pits are integrated with the surrounding ecosystem and community to meet the specific needs of the people. Both land restoration and land reclamation ultimately create an alternative land use to extraction and reduce the prevalence of sacrifice zones in communities..

Environment and Biodiversity

The current extractivist system has turned living ecosystems into natural resources. Mining create enormous environmental damage both on the land and its biodiversity. Mineworkers occupy settlements surrounding the mine and require housing, fuel, and food. This has led to the “exploitation of wood and the degrading of forest vegetation,” which has destabilized the water cycle through “increased run-off” and “severe flooding.”

These processes of extractivism amount to “Ecocide,” defined as “the deliberate or negligent violation of key state and human rights” based on the causing of “lasting ecological damage.” A post- extractivist society allows communities to regulate their natural environment and the bodies around them, preventing external capitalists from controlling land and damaging it. This would enable the reversal of policies of “Ecocide.”

Ibid, p. 169.
Ibid, p. 407.
Mabey, p. 12.
Mabey, p. 9.

Exploitation of Labor: Depersonalization and Dehumanization of People

The relentless accumulation of resources through the exploitation of labor is the quintessential characteristic of extractive capitalism. This extractive obesity and resource accumulation are required for the over-production embedded within the logic of capital. Harris-White has observed the contradictory nature of “accumulation and profit” and the “distribution of wages,” resulting in a crisis of overproduction and underconsumption. However, with labor existing as a cost to outsourcing, extractivists are free to make labor as cheap as possible.

Neocolonialism has brought poverty to Africa, and allowing their natural resources to be extracted is the only way for many communities to survive. As Marc Choyt remarks, the attitude of the neocolonialists is “the natives are going to be saved… but to do this, they must first give up their farmland, clean water, and intact traditional communities.”

Conclusion

This literature review traces the historical context of resource extraction and these resources’ materiality to sustain our current technological commerce age. We explored further place-based alternatives to extractivism and map leveraged points through a cosmopolitan lens to connect the local to the global economy. Finally, we explored experimental post-extractive futures through the lens of Geo-futurism.

Gray, Mark Allan (1996) “The International Crime of Ecocide”, Michigan Journal of International Law, 26(2), 6949-7006.
Harriss-White, Barbara (2005) “Poverty and Capitalism”, QEH Working Paper Series, 5, p.8
Choyt, Marc (2020) “Jewelry, Neocolonialism, and Strange Fruit”, Reflective Jewelry, last seen 12/02/2021 .

Building on the theories of cosmopolitan localism, this research will aim to deliver new epistemologies for distributed natural resource systems. This will require thinking critically beyond any modern binaries that we unconsciously operate by understanding national and international structures that affect Africa and its resources. Potential explorations may include research on structures like the socio-economics, ecology, business, socio-cultural, and socio-anthropological factors that influence the African society.

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